I don't know what can be said about consciousness in regards to any hypothesis. They are either right or wrong. No? — Patterner

Yes, but other hypotheses allow a basis for discussion about how you'd tell.

But I'm not saying everything is consciousness. I'm saying everything is consciousness. — Patterner

Typing mistake here, I assume? Or else you're getting super woo-woo. :smile:

Philosophy is describing the workings of practices in which we already share interests (in the practice; thus their normativity) so it’s just a matter of agreeing on the explication of the criteria. — Antony Nickles

"Just" a matter of agreeing! Would that it were so simple. I'm not holding out for some radical relativism that would make sensible conversation about this impossible. I'm only pointing out that, within any practice that is deeper and more complicated than, for instance, "what constitutes a correct and sufficient apology or excuse," there is likely going to be debate about framework and criteria that is difficult to resolve. You go on to add "(or scientific study)" to the example about apologies and excuses, but do you really think this is in the same ballpark? Apologies may be seen to be largely conventional, and the prospects for agreement are bright, but is this true of scientific practice? I don't think so.

To say you can speak intelligibly and have reasons doesn’t mean you can say anything you want (intelligibly) in claiming, say, how an apology works (or how knowing does). Again, we might not end up agreeing, nor circumscribe every case or condition, but it’s not as if anything goes. — Antony Nickles

Right. But the things that do go, will keep the discussion about normativity alive.

people who throw cabers — Antony Nickles

Is that like stirring the possum? :smile:

[Specific criteria] hardly transcends the local interpretative predispositions of various cultural communities on earth, — Williams, 302-3

I don't think "[specific criteria]" will do as a substitute for my "[A philosophy which doesn't claim to speak from an Absolute Conception]". Williams is talking about an entire (non-absolute) philosophical framework, not criteria for a practice. His point is that you don't even get to practices without certain understandings about basic background stuff. These understandings, on this way of seeing it, are "local predispositions" because we've stipulated that the philosophical framework is non-absolute. And let's not forget that all this is being set up by Williams in order to question it -- to ask what is at stake by setting up the local/Absolute binary in this way.

If we insist on removing a topic from its context and specific criteria, then we lose the ability to judge a thing based on its own standards.
— Antony Nickles

Agreed, but why would speaking from an absolute conception have to involve this kind of removal? Wouldn't a genuine View from Nowhere provide, along with many other things, an account of those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment? — J

I just did “account for those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment.” — Antony Nickles

Yes. The point is that the Absolute Conception can do that too. It doesn't need to remove a topic from its context.

We can’t with one hand give that there are a multitude of criteria and with the other require that the judgment of each thing requires the same “basis”. It depends on the thing whether the judgment is “absolute” or not. — Antony Nickles

Here you're raising a good question about what "absolute conception" really means. What's the cash value? If we were to discover such a conception, would it mean that all those alleged possible criteria get reduced to some common denominator, conceptually? Is that the "basis" upon which the absolute conception itself rests? I don't know. For Williams' purposes -- and, he suggests, for Descartes' -- an absolute conception would allow us to make sense of, to explain in a unified way, "local" things like secondary qualities, social practices, and disagreements within philosophy. Here's another quote that may help:

[The absolute conception] should be able to overcome relativism in our view of reality through having a view of the world (or at least the coherent conception of such a view) which contains a theory of error: which can explain the existence of rival views, and of itself. — Williams, 301

Judging a good shoe and what is considered a planet are different in kind, not hierarchy, or scope. — Antony Nickles

Say more about this? What is the difference in kind that you see?

But how philosophy is done, and what even counts as philosophy, is always an internal struggle of the discipline — Antony Nickles

Well, yes, that's how I see it, but can you reconcile such a view with what you're saying about "agreeing on the explication of criteria"? When philosophy takes itself as its subject, I believe it enters a unique discourse. Philosophy may talk about science by looking at scientific criteria; the assumption is that philosophy's criteria for how to do this are not on the table. But when the inquiry turns inward, we don't have the luxury of bumping any questions of judgment or method to some off-the-table level.

This is the benefit of looking at the tradition as a set of texts, and not necessarily a set of problems. — Antony Nickles

Interesting. Can you elaborate?

I wonder, then, why you want to say this. It pretty much forecloses discussion.
— J
It doesn't foreclose discussion about the idea that consciousness is fundamental, and that it is simple, undifferentiated experience. — Patterner

But what can now be said about it? It's either true or it isn't, and we don't have any way of evaluating which. Moreover, if everything is consciousness, we can't talk about what it might be like if some thing(s) were not. The position prevents us from being able to specify an alternative.

The idea is that there is no non-consciousness. Everything is experiencing. — Patterner

Compare:

"The idea is that there is no non-matter. Everything is material."

The interesting thing about both these positions is that they can't be argued either for or against. They both involve an interpretation or construal of their key term -- "consciousness" and "matter" -- in such a way as to mean "everything there is." So all one can reply is, "OK, that's what you mean," but it's hard to know where to go from there. I guess one can say, "Almost nobody else means that," but that's not an argument, it's an expostulation.

I wonder, then, why you want to say this. It pretty much forecloses discussion.

OK, sorry I missed your response to sushi.

For those who want to argue the premise, I won't be participating. — Patterner

I just want to understand it, before contributing anything. Mainly the use of "experience." You write:

A rock experiences being a rock . . . A human experiences being a human. — Patterner

Does a dead human experience being a dead human? Can you sketch what that would mean?

It seems we are taking abstraction from context or an individual (or human fallibility, limitation) as the criteria for “certainty”. I’m trying to point out how forced this is by differentiating topics and claiming that their individual criteria and their appropriate contexts are necessary and sufficient for being accepted (that we can all assert intelligible and rational claims about their “framework”). — Antony Nickles

The "we" here is understood as referring to those within Williams' hypothesis -- the proponents of the "absolute conception" who might be understood as claiming that such a conception would provide certainty. I, and I think Williams, would agree that this is forced, or at least unnecessary. There remains, though, the question of whether "being accepted" is the right way to look at it. The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality.

That this does not ensure agreement is philosophy’s (and morality’s) lack of power — Antony Nickles

How are you understanding "power" here?

If we insist on removing a topic from its context and specific criteria, then we lose the ability to judge a thing based on its own standards. — Antony Nickles

Agreed, but why would speaking from an absolute conception have to involve this kind of removal? Wouldn't a genuine View from Nowhere provide, along with many other things, an account of those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment? What would be questioned, from this view, would be the absolute nature of such judgment -- only the Absolute Conception gets to say absolute things.

Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science?
— J

Yes. Philosophy is the unearthing of the criteria for a practice, such as why we value, and how we judge, science. The philosophical assessment of science is not based on science’s own criteria. — Antony Nickles

Right, but that wasn't quite my question. The philosophical assessment of philosophy is presumably based on philosophy's own criteria. You don't see a problem there?

This is not “local”, so much as, specific. Not based on the individual, but the particular (criteria and context of a practice). — Antony Nickles

An important question. I looked back at Williams to clarify how he was using "local":

[A philosophy which doesn't claim to speak from an Absolute Conception] hardly transcends the local interpretative predispositions of various cultural communities on earth, [so] there is not much reason to think it could transcend the peculiarities of humanity as a whole. . . . Descartes' aspiration [was] for an absolute conception which abstracts from local or distorted representations of the world. — Williams, 302-3

So I'm pretty sure Williams means what you mean by "specific to a context of a practice." Such a context would require the "interpretative predispositions" Williams speaks of. But he's obviously uncomfortable with leaving it at that. Notice how he pairs "local" with "distorted". Again, I don't know to what extent Williams shares this view; I read him as trying to make the best case he can for why we ought to be concerned with this question, in much the way Descartes was. He would change your statement, "Abstraction makes philosophy impossible," to a question: "Does abstraction (of the V-from-N sort) make philosophy impossible? Why have so many philosophers, beginning with Descartes, tried to locate genuine philosophy within an Absolute Conception?"

Which brings us full circle around to Williams' "move" that I quoted and discussed in the OP. I think this is his way of dissolving the problem.

You could say this is a “thin end of the wedge” strategy. — Wayfarer

I figured this was your method. No reason an OP has to cover the entire ground all at once. It's only worth pointing out that, when "purpose" or "meaning" are cast in specifically human terms, a whole new set of concerns emerge.

the idea that human beings are, in some sense, the universe becoming conscious of itself . . . Now, that doesn’t amount to a fully formed metaphysics, but it at least opens a way of thinking that challenges the view of humanity as a cosmic fluke—an accidental intelligence adrift in a meaningless expanse. — Wayfarer

It probably is helpful to have some "sample metaphysics" that would suggest other ways of looking at this question, and I'm quite taken with the semi-Hegelian idea of a self-conscious universe. But I think the "cosmic fluke" view can be challenged without this, and on much simpler grounds. We're talking about degrees of likelihood based on ludicrously incomplete evidence. People who want to settle this one way or the other seem to assume that human inquiry, especially science, has reached an endpoint from which we can now pronounce on these questions. Why in the world would anyone think that? Is humanity a pointless fluke? Check back with us in a thousand years -- we may know more about it then! And if the retort is "But science can't talk about what has a 'point'," same answer: We'll see! At the moment our understanding of these questions is on the level of little children pottering around in the kindergarten.

Which is why I argue that h.sapiens transcends purely biological determination. Hence, philosophy! — Wayfarer

Well, I agree, but I didn't see you arguing for that. I thought you were contending that any sort of biological purposiveness was good enough to answer the question, "Does existence have a purpose?" -- "whether life, the universe, and everything is in any sense meaningful or purposeful." Were you trying to get to a purpose that is actually meaningful for humans? I don't think your OP addressed that, other than to say that merely asking the question must imply some framework in which "meaning" can figure -- "The moment we ask whether something is meaningful, we’re already inhabiting a world structured by purposes." And I share @T Clark's doubts about whether that follows.

Another way to say this: By focusing on the question of whether the universe has a purpose, you seem to be implying that an affirmative answer will mean something in terms of human purpose. Again, I may have missed it, but I don't see that discussed in the OP. Never too late, though!

Appreciate these thoughts. I'm outta here for now but will definitely reply.

I think we're just trying to get straight on terminology. You seem to want any occurrence of a sentence to be an assertion of what it says (just as a table is, analogously, an "assertion" of what the pile of wood is), and I could imagine a framework where that was what everybody agreed. But then we'd need a different term to refer to the way assertions are commonly demarcated -- that is, as occurrences of sentences where some individual is using them to judge the content as true.

the mere occurrence of a sentence does not amount to an assertion of that sentence. — Banno

Yes, I'm not meaning to deny this. Without some such stipulation, we could hardly begin to create a workable structure. Nor could we fit the idea of "occurrence of a sentence" into our actual lives, which offer so many opportunities and manners for sentences to occur.

We could agree that "P" is an assertion from someone. The quotes indicate that? Does that work? — frank

Yes, we could agree as to that. And that's usually what we do: We read "P" as something that can be asserted by someone -- a performance that someone can make -- and in some contexts we just take it as written that "P" has been asserted.

Nothing wrong with any of that. They're examples of what I meant by "some stipulations about how to hang the concepts together." The important point to me is that we don't treat "proposition" and "assertion" as if they have prior meanings that we discover, or that an ideal logical language would reveal as necessary.

So if I say: "an example of a proposition is: 'The cat is on the mat.'" I am saying something like: "it is true that S is an example of P," but crucially, not asserting S. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good. Now take it a step further. Call this statement Q: "'S' is an example of P"; and this statement R: "It is true that 'S' is an example of P" ("It is true that Q").

Q itself is, presumably, also a proposition. I still haven't asserted S, of course, but have I asserted Q, if I don't also assert R? Or do I need the words "It is true that . . ." in order to turn "Q" from a sentence/statement/line of poetry into an assertion? Do I need to construct R in theory (in a post, for example), or is something more required?

Once we start asking questions like this, we see again how "queer" (in the Wittgensteinian sense) propositions and assertions are. I'm not saying these are profoundly unanswerable questions, only that the answers rely more than we like to acknowledge on some stipulations about how to hang the concepts together.

Interesting metaphor. I'm assuming you mean balls of the testicular variety? Is it a good thing to have that kind, when it comes to deciding what to assert as true? Just asking . . . And if I'm taking you more seriously than you intended, sorry, it's hard to judge tone in a post!

You might have a look at the Ring of Gyges tale in Book II of the Republic.

Excellent, thank you. I hope Nagel's take on this will be increasingly shared both within and without the scientific community.

I have some minor quibbles about teleonomy -- I think the distinction with teleology is more meaningful than you do -- but they're not worth going into.

But here's my main question: Let's grant that biological life is purposive in all the ways you say it is. Let's even grant, which I doubt, that all living creatures dimly sense such a purpose -- gotta eat, gotta multiply! The question remains, Is that the kind of purpose worth having for us humans? Is that what we mean by the "meaning of life"?

Indeed -- and I think Nagel goes into this as well -- it's precisely the pointlessness of the repetitive biological drives you cite, that causes many people to question the whole idea of purpose or meaning. It looks absurd, both existentially and in common parlance: "I'm alive so that I can . . . generate more life? That's it? Who cares?" Cue the Sisyphus analogy . . .

Any thoughts about this?

"P" probably entails that I know P, just as it entails that I exist and I'm communicating and I'm speaking a language.

"P" is not identical to any of those, though, I don't think. Whether it's identical to "P is true." is another matter. I would say yes — frank

Referring back to Rödl again. He insists we acknowledge that, fundamentally, we don't know what we're talking about when we talk about P.

Even something like "P = P is true" starts to look bizarre once you let go of the standard accounts of P. If P is true, and is the same thing as P, doesn't that mean that P is a bit of language? So when I see that bit of language, I know it's true? Obviously that's not what we mean; we need some kind of assertion to go along with it. So "P = P is true" isn't right. But how do we provide the assertion? Is there a single way this is supposed to happen?

1. The cat is on the mat
2. I think that the cat is on the mat

(2) can be true even if (1) is false.

It may be that whoever asserts (1) is implicitly asserting (2), but they are nonetheless different claims. — Michael

Rödl tells us that "I use 'judgment' and 'thought' interchangeably, following ordinary usage." Let's say we do the same. That means we can render 2 as "I judge that the cat is on the mat." The subject of this statement is now a particular judgment; and as @Michael points out, (2) can still be true even if (1) is false.

What about the "implicit assertion" of (2) from (1)? Does that change if we think of (2) as being about a judgment rather than a thought? We can see how Rödl's clarification of his usage is so important, because he's telling us not to interpret "thought" as a psychological event here. "Thought" is a "Fregean thought," a content, not an event. I say this because a judgment has to be understood that way. We don't say, "I formed a judgment at time T1 but I'm no longer sure if that is my judgment; let me go back and make it again . . . and again . . . and again . . ." "Judgment" is meant to enter the Space of Reasons, not be merely a report on brain activity.

So -- producing my rather tiny rabbit here -- I'd say yes, (2) is implicitly asserted by (1), if (1) is in fact asserted. Which is by no means clear, since it's a classic instance of "P" -- see above.

Good stuff. We can't box up "philosophy" and say either that it was only done one way, or that it should be. Thus, what I meant by

this kind of philosophy. — J

wasn't the entire Western practice, but a particular analytic conception which is often quite severe about what counts as good philosophical discourse.

I took the “view from nowhere” as the requirement of a criteria of certainty (which I take Descartes to be desiring, even in bringing up “God”) — Antony Nickles

As I said to @Wayfarer, above:

One of the hallmarks of the absolute conception [or the View from Nowhere], as opposed to a local or relativized conception, would be a type of certainty. But we have to spell this out carefully: The certainty is meant to guarantee that whatever is being asserted is framework-independent, pre-interpretation, true no matter who is asserting it, in no matter what context. This has understandably been questioned as either impossible or incoherent. — J

Is this the same thing, the same flavor of certainty, as the kind Descartes sought? I don't think so. This sort of certainty is more like an argument which goes: "Well, if what I claim to know is framework-independent, true no matter who asserts it, etc., et al., then surely it must be certain. What more could I require, in the way of certainty?"

. . . a conception of the “absolute”, then we’ve reached the cliff @Banno was worried about, as that would be theology’s discussion with science. — Antony Nickles

And here's yet another way to construe certainty: Certainty is what we get when we discover we are viewing the world from an absolute point of view. This, I wouldn't hesitate to call apodictic. It is self-verifying in much the same way that Descartes' God cannot be a deceiver. Interesting question: Can this version of certainty ever attach itself to something that isn't God? There are those who believe that scientific realism is self-verifying, on pain of contradiction.

If we are talking about a conception of absolutely everything, then we’d describe justice and rocks the same way. — Antony Nickles

There's benefit in having different ways to describe different things, hence collapsing everything into one description is leaving things out? — Banno

What Banno says, would indeed be the problem if speaking from within some absolute conception implied only one type or level of description. But does that follow? Perhaps you could say more about why we'd have to describe abstracta and physical items the same way.

As Wittgenstein was trying to point out, different practices have different criteria, different standards (not just certainty)—what matters as that counting as such-and-such (pointing, apologies, a moral stance, a fact); as it were, being true to itself. — Antony Nickles

OK, but . . . does this answer my question about absolute vs. local? Sorry if I'm not seeing it. To put it another way: Is what Witt says coming from an absolute, a local, or neither viewpoint?

More may be dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that’s not to say we can’t acknowledge, say, how science is important to us — Antony Nickles

I think Williams' problem, and mine, would be: "More may dreamt of than in our philosophy, but that's not to say we can't acknowledge how philosophy is important to us." -- is that true, W and I are asking? What form does that acknowledgement take? Is it the same sort of discourse that allows phil to speak about a discipline outside itself, such as science?

You are right that my equating greatness as an artist with an aesthetic of form and shape is personal to me. — RussellA

OK, that's how it seemed to me, thanks.

all the while allowing us the knowledge that we don’t know how it works. — Mww

Snake swallows tail again . . . but you're right.

I went back and reread the OP and your response to my comment, as well as all the other posts on this thread. But I don’t get it. — T Clark

I feel bad about this, and will try to think of other ways to clarify what we're talking about. For now, please do keep following along, maybe someone else will do better than I.

*

There are a number of other interesting points that people have raised, thanks. I look forward to responding, but I'll be out of cyberworld all day and evening. Carry on!

That is philosophy’s claim*, but it neither claims it “absolutely”, nor “locally”, as these are predetermined, created standards. — Antony Nickles

(* the claim is: "as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the [absolute] conception is, my talk about it can remain "local.")

I was with you all the way, until this. Maybe I'm not understanding you. Let's grant that both "absolute" and "local" are predetermined, created standards. How does this exempt philosophy from nonetheless speaking from one or the other? What would be the third alternative?

So if it’s a philosophical claim, then how is it to be adjudicated? Surely that would require some framework within which the expression “philosophical absolute” is meaningful. I suppose when Williams asks whether, if we were to possess such an insight, we must know we possess it, he’s invoking the Cartesian expectation that a genuine absolute insight would be, as Descartes claimed of the cogito, apodictic — self-certifying by virtue of its subject matter. — Wayfarer

This may be helpful:

There are two demands which the absolute conception of reality seemed to make: that we should at least show the possibility of explanations of the place in the world of psychological phenomena such as the perception of secondary qualities, and, further, of cultural phenomena such as the local non-absolute conceptions of the world; and of the absolute conception itself . . . No one is yet in a position to meet those demands. — Williams, 300-1

So yes, this is spinning off from Descartes' project, and we see this particularly when Williams first names "secondary qualities" as needing explanation (something Descartes understood) and then links this with "local non-absolute conceptions," which probably would have been meaningless to Descartes but is very much of concern to us.

I'm not sure if Williams' framing of "absolute knowledge" requires that it be apodictic. This is one of the puzzles about what absolute knowledge, should such exist, would look like. Does math count as absolute knowledge? It is arguably self-certifying.

As for certainty:

the Cartesian anxiety: the fear that unless we can affirm an absolute with certainty, we’re condemned to relativism. — Wayfarer

Yes. One of the hallmarks of the absolute conception, as opposed to a local or relativized conception, would be a type of certainty. But we have to spell this out carefully: The certainty is meant to guarantee that whatever is being asserted is framework-independent, pre-interpretation, true no matter who is asserting it, in no matter what context. This has understandably been questioned as either impossible or incoherent.

But is it the kind of certainty that says, "This very statement [about the grounds and limitations of the absolute conception] is certainly true"? That goes to the heart of my discomfort with Williams' "move."

philosophical reflection can meaningfully trace the limits of conditioned knowledge without pretending to stand outside of it. — Wayfarer

Agreed, and I think Williams is trying to show a way for this to be legitimate.

But if we never say more than “here’s what an absolute would be like if there were one,” have we said anything of consequence? Or would it have been better not to have asked the question? — Wayfarer

Good statement of what I meant by

But don't we want to say more? Or can the "more" only happen from some version of an absolute conception? — J

Do you have an opinion about this "more"? How would you answer your own question? I'm guessing you would point to a wisdom-tradition response that "gestures beyond" this kind of philosophy. . . ? (as suggested by your subsequent post, from which I quote below) My own answers would be similar.

Maybe what’s needed isn’t absolute knowledge but an orientation toward the limits of conditioned thought—a recognition that philosophy, at its best, gestures beyond what it can fully capture. — Wayfarer

What I like aesthetically does not depend on any judgment. I make no subjective aesthetic judgements.

As objects don't have any intrinsic art value, my aesthetic likes cannot be objective but only subjective. — RussellA

But how does this fit with "Derain is a great artist and Banksy is not"? That's what I meant about an aesthetic judgment "cashing out" as merely a matter of likes and dislikes. So I guess that is what you mean? "Great artist" = "someone I like a lot".

Or, perhaps, the bolded phrase above is the way out? Derain's painting doesn't have any intrinsic art value, but somehow acquires it? How might that happen?

Apologies if I'm still not getting it.

Sure. Williams assumes that the "absolute knowledge" problem is real. If one has already settled that satisfactorily for oneself, then this is merely an interesting argument to look at.

The claim that science seeks a "view from nowhere" is a misrepresentation. Science seeks a view from anywhere. — Banno

Fair enough. "View from Nowhere" has gotten entrenched, via Nagel, but maximal contexts makes sense. And Nagel didn't mean science in particular.

But then philosophy does lead to at least this little bit of absolute knowledge... and so philosophy's having allowed that some other discourse is the source of absolute knowledge is itself an absolute knowledge...

But then the "very original move", that even if philosophy provides a conception that includes the idea of absolute knowledge, this doesn’t entail that philosophy knows that the conception is itself true in an absolute sense. It's still presumably the science or religion or revelation or mysticism that performs this task...

How is that? Is that close enough? — Banno

Very close. I bolded in an absolute sense to make it even clearer. Philosophy is going to talk about some other inquiry's absolute conception, and talk about it in a way that remains tied to non-absolute conceptions. The things phil says about these absolute conceptions are not put forward as true beyond the historical or cultural context of the philosopher -- they are not "known to be true" in the same way that the absolute conception knows things to be true.

I think that is what Williams is suggesting.

Then this seems to me very close to what we have been discussing concerning philosophy as plumbing. — Banno

Interesting. I'll reflect on that. You may be right, precisely because I'm not happy with that conclusion, and want more from philosophy! Which leads me to view Williams' move with suspicion. Can the mere avoidance of self-reflection or self-appraisal still leave philosophy able to say what it wants? Well, I guess that very much depends on who's doing the wanting. :smile:

To be continued . . .

added: or
"what if we accept the idea that revelation aims to provide that knowledge"
or
"what if we accept the idea that mysticism aims to provide that knowledge"
and so on. — Banno

Right. Williams' question is about the idea of an "absolute conception," not any one in particular.

Looks like you are not going to get the science toothpaste back in the tube. — Banno

I know! It's a perfectly valid and interesting topic -- what to make of science and its defenders as an absolute conception -- but not the one I was hoping to address, picking up from Williams.

I agree with a great deal that you're saying. I think Williams might too, because as @Joshs pointed out, he does not espouse a scientific View from Nowhere, and as I was trying to explain, he mentions it only as a convenient point of reference to help locate what he's really asking about.

Maybe I can phrase Williams' problem using this:

the natural sciences cannot be complete in principle, — Wayfarer

Let's grant that. Williams is asking, If philosophy asserts this, is it asserting a piece of absolute knowledge? It's certainly a striking and important assertion, if true; the question is, what is its claim to being knowledge, and of what sort? Is it "merely local" -- that is, the product of a philosophical culture which cannot lay claim to articulating absolute conceptions of the truth?

I don't think Williams much cares whether science, or scientism, would agree that the target truth claim is indeed absolute knowledge. What he wants to know is, Does philosophy say that it is? And isn't this self-contradictory, if we stipulate that local news is the only kind you're going to get on the Philosophy Channel?

As you can see, Williams suggests a solution that involves rejecting the claim to knowledge: "we would need some reasonable idea of what such an [absolute] conception would be like, but we have not agreed that if we have that conception, we have to know that we have it." And I'm asking, is this legit? By remaining agnostic about the absolute truth of "The natural sciences cannot be complete in principle", have we succeeded in saying something about an absolute conception ("a reasonable idea of what it would be like") without claiming to know it, or affirming it to be absolutely true? In a way, yes, but don't we want to say more? Or can the "more" only happen from some version of an absolute conception? We can see how the snake swallows its own head . . .

One might, somewhat redundantly, further assert that one asserts that the cat is on the mat. If the need arose. — Banno

Does it seem less redundant if it read, "I assert that I've made the judgment that the cat is on the mat"? This formulation tries to bring in "making a judgment" as a 1st-person activity, not just a semantical stance. And you couldn't just lop off "I assert" because "I've made the judgment" doesn't quite say the same thing as "I assert". Unless you think Frege would just replace that phrase as well with a judgment stroke?

What answer should I have known? — bongo fury

Oh, sorry, from your post I thought you acknowledged that "all sentences assert" can't be quite right. I didn't have anything more esoteric in mind.

Good. That sets out the issue quite clearly and simply. Some of us around here, following Kimhi and Rödl, want to make "thought" more complicated, but it's by no means obvious that this must be correct.

A sentence is already an assertion sign. (I assert.) How does it end up needing reinforcement? — bongo fury

:smile: You know the answer to that. But for the record: I seriously doubt if your use of the sentence "The cat is on the mat", above, genuinely asserted anything. And when T. S. Shmeliot uses the sentence in a poem, it's even less likely to be an assertion. And when I scream it in a crowded theater . . . it's art.

That said, the "proposition solution" is somewhat enigmatic to many of us.

"My thought of judging that things are so is a different act of the mind from my judging that they are so." - J

Just to be clear, that's Rödl, not me, though I think he's right. And @Banno's paraphrase is also right if we agree that both "I judge" and "my thought of judging" can be captured by the judgment stroke, in the later case by simple recursion. Complications can ensue about exactly how to understand "my thought of judging", if it isn't understood as a type of assertion.

But if she had made a pile of pebbles, with the same patience and focus, complete unto herself, the resulting pile would be the vehicle, and I would feel the same looking at it as I do the crayon spots on paper. — Patterner

Yes. So we only need to ask whether your experience falls under the aesthetic, or something closer to the heart. I'm happy seeing it either way.

I didn't tag anyone, but did you see my last post? The paper with crayon spots is entirely inconsequential. — Patterner

Sorry, just saw this. I love that story. Do you mean that the physical thing, the paper and crayon, just happened to be the vehicle chosen to deliver the "origin story" which is one of sentiment, innocence, and personal connection? (or something like that, pardon me if my words are clumsy)

You might come to understand it all, and be able to do the analysis on your own. But you might never come to like his music — Patterner

But then again you might. Would the tutoring have had a bearing, do you think?

There may be an absolute reality but we don’t have to claim that our philosophical accounts of this absolute can themselves be known absolutely in order to make progress in our understanding of reality. We can do this through local, embodied and situated practical inquiries. — Joshs

Good. That's how I read Williams' position as well. But the question remains: Does the move he makes in the material quoted from p. 303 suffice to show how this is possible? Williams says that we don't have to know either 1) that there is an absolute conception, or 2) what it is. Short of such knowledge, philosophical statements, including this very "piece of philosophy", are exempted from self-contradiction; as long as I don't claim knowledge about what the conception is, my talk about it can remain "local."

In short, I can be right about this, but not assert it as a piece of knowledge. As long as I don't say I know that I've got it right, I've avoided the trap.

Do you think this works, or is it only clever?

The presupposition that a view from nowhere, absolute knowledge, objective reality, exists is the foundation of the orthodox view of what you are calling "natural science." It is metaphysics, philosophy, not science. Is this what you have called "one piece of philosophy which has absolute status?" The problem is that this is just one metaphysical view among many. — T Clark

I kinda wish Williams had left natural science out of his argument about the absolute conception, because I can see it's distracting several posters. But let me try to reply.

Williams has set this up as a "what if". What if we accept what you're calling "the orthodox view"? He's well aware that this is all it is, he's only pointing to it as the view (he was writing in the 1970s) most likely to garner support from those who think an absolute conception, a View from Nowhere, is available. It is, as you say, philosophy, not science.

So no, the "one piece of philosophy which has absolute status" -- or seems to; this is Williams' question -- is the one that would declare what does or doesn't have absolute status. Science may or may not figure in this. And it doesn't matter whether you think science has that status, or not. Either declaration, yea or nay, is going to appear as a philosophical statement claiming to demarcate an important area of human inquiry.

Apologies if my OP didn't make this sufficiently clear, though as I say, by starting with the so-called orthodox view of science as a potential absolute conception, Williams may have made the issue more confusing than it needs to be. I hadn't realized that until reading your, and others', responses.

If there is or could be such a thing as the View from Nowhere, a view of reality absolutely uninterpreted by human perspectives and limitations, then scientific practice would produce this view, not philosophy.
— J

This is exactly backwards. — T Clark

So, same response here. I have no idea if Williams believes this. I certainly don't. He's giving us a way to frame his question about absolute conceptions that he hopes will be familiar to his readers. His question -- and mine, in this OP -- is not about which absolute conception, if any, is correct. The question is about whether the argument I quoted succeeds in removing the onus of "absolute conception" from the "piece of philosophy" that claims to know that there is an absolute conception, yet presents itself as "merely local."

The whole thing is an attempt to see whether this house of conceptual cards can stand -- whether Williams has saved it, or only saved the appearances.

Maybe read the quote from his p. 303 again, in the light of all this?

So if that weird microtonality is part of the appeal, it's the production that should get the credit, not John Lennon (if I don't misremember the story, or fell for a biased one). — Dawnstorm

I believe the story's true. But I think Lennon was the one who realized he wanted to splice them. As you say, technique-wise, he didn't know how, but George Martin did. Collaboration again.

Current production techniques seem to have made snapping things to pitch and beat via software routine: it's not bad that you can do it. Correcting a "mistake" to save an otherwise great take isn't so bad. But a routine rule-setting can get rid of a lot of expression. — Dawnstorm

Yeah, welcome to (a big part of) my world. The praxis question, if I can dignify it with that word, is what counts as a mistake. Making all the pitches and beats perfect is, for many kinds of music, including the kinds I mostly like, quite deadly to the musical effect. Being "a little off" is not a mistake, unless you're a robot. (Ah, but how much is "a little"? Taste, again.) If I record drum samples, using a quantizer to keep them precise, I generally then have to go back and fuck them up a little, in the way a real drummer with feel and style would. (Unless I'm doing a Steely Dan cover! :wink: ).

In contrast, sometimes a mistake is just . . . a clam, as jazzers say. And those you want to fix if you can. I personally think it's fine to do this; Jimi Hendrix did it frequently, back in the day. But if I'm doing it all the time, every time I play a guitar solo (which given my skills on that instrument is quite likely), you gotta wonder just how great the great take really is. Time to bring in the guitar genius who lives up the road?

Recording technology has, I think, muddled the earlier difference between composition and performance. — Dawnstorm

Absolutely. Technology will change, artistic practice follows.

. When did we get the concept of a recording artist? I'm not entirely sure. We've had it by the fifties, certainly. It goes hand in hand with concepts like "live performance" or "cover version". — Dawnstorm

Great book to read on this subject: Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever.

Basically, I think even the aesthetic experience you're aware of is already a complex composite and not independent of the way the social institution you might title "music" propagates. Your aesthetic experience is part of and permeated by the flux. — Dawnstorm

This is a huge topic, and one I enjoy nattering on about, but I'll just say that I don't believe there's such a thing as an "innocent ear," a way of listening to music that can separate it from your culture and your own individual experience. And this leads us back to the idea of traditions, styles, and practices as the guidelines for understanding how to appreciate music, or any art.